Is it beneficial to run more than 20mile long run?

There is a limiting factor of time here many coaches talk about of 2:30 being the longest you want to run in training for a marathon--the benefits stop accruing at that point in terms of aerobic development, overall tiredness, and injury risk. Thus, you would only go longer than 20 miles if you would run it in sub 2:30 at the proper long run pace. At least that is what Daniels would say.

So for a 2:05 guy, a long run of over 20 would make sense, but for hobby joggers like me, not so much. It would be better to pack those miles you would do over 20 to another long run of say 18. I fudge my long runs up to 2:45 and do another long run of 2:20 during peak mileage over a one week cycle. That is what I found works best.

I agree with this. Once you get to the point of true glycogen completion, you are doing more harm than good. For most folks, anything over 20 miles gets you too close to that line to be worth it. I have gone as long as 23, and will get up to 22 a couple of times during marathon training, but that is marathon specific and it only happens a couple of times a training cycle. I also make sure I get enough calories in me the morning of those efforts, and take in fuel during those runs in most cases to ensure that I don't reach full glycogen completion (although I don't do that on straight 20 mile runs earlier in the training cycle as I want to get really close to glycogen completion a couple of times during each cycle). I also tend to be able to fairly comfortable cover 22 miles in just about 2:30 exactly on most of my easy distance runs.

Runner6969 wrote:

Yo. This week I am running 120miles. Just wondering if my long run should be more than 20miles. I know that people say your long run should be 1/5th of your week, but should I run 24miles?? The longest run I have ever done is 20miles. Some advice would be much appreciated.

This question comes up all the time. I use to hear it explained a lot when I Runnersworld subscriber. From what I heard and from my own experience. If a basketball player wants to have a good jump shot, they need to spend a lot of time practicing their jump shot. You shoot until your arms are tired and learn to maintain your forms and make shots when your arms are tired. Maybe that's 200, 250 or 300 shots. However, once you get to 300 shots for example, if that's the point were your arms are so tired that your form looks horrible and you are consistently missing shots, there is nothing being gained at that point. Lets say 300 shots is equal to a 20 mile run, if 300 is the point of diminishing returns shooting jump shots, so would anything over a 20 mile run. Everybody is different, I've known guys who would always do a couple 30 mile runs leading up to a marathon and saws other runner attempt to do that and it wiped them out and disrupted their training for several weeks. If you are a sub-3 marathoner, I would say is experiment, but if you can't run sub-3, I don't see how that much volume would benefit you. If you truly respond well to a lot of volume, a better option is run 15 miles in the morning and another 15 in the evening.

3/10. A 120 MPW runner wouldn't ask such a noob question.

Bump it

you seriously posted this about 4 Focking miles????

do you think 4 miles is going to make or break your performance?

I agree with everyone else that the risk/reward just isn't there when it comes to going over 20 miles. Your body is designed to store something like 16-18 miles of glycogen and going too much after that just means you're running on empty. You can get away with it when it's a marathon race, but in regular training you're risking too much damage without allowing enough recovery and overdoing it could really set you back.

You also don't want to be that guy who at mile 16 or 18 pushes to complete all 20 when you start to notice something wrong with your body. In the end 116 miles for the week instead of 120 miles for the week is much better if completing those last 4 miles cause an injury that requires weeks of taking it easy.

slowerthanud3423 wrote:

3/10. A 120 MPW runner wouldn't ask such a noob question.

Yepper.